Winter blooms: golden wattle

About a month ago the wattle started to bloom.  There are many different varieties and the one pictured on the Australia Day stamp from 1990 is Australia's national flower.  I've always enjoyed learning the official flower of different places (the possibility of its being arbitrary not withstanding).  I know that Wisconsin's state flower is the wood violet, Kansas has the sunflower, and Alberta's provincial flower is the wild rose.

The golden wattle is beautiful and blooms all along the roadsides, as we discovered on our drive down to Busselton.  With its can't-throw-a-stone-without-taking-out-some-wattle presence it might come as a surprise to you, as it did to me--though fortunately not through sad experience--that it is illegal to pick wild wattle.  You have to either admire it from afar, grow it yourself, or purchase it from someone who grows it.  Or, as in my case, be fortunate enough to stumble upon a friendly woman selling eggs at the Fremantle Market.  She had bunches of wattle along the back of her booth and offered me some just because I admired it.  That, and I'd just bought a dozen eggs.  I love wattle.  It's not difficult to see why Australian's are so protective of their floral emblem.

When it catches the sunlight, it glows.